Green Tea Moment - July 30 '09

Taking a moment, late, during another of these days at work.
Consciously slowed myself, during this making of a tea. Green tea, this time. Sniffed the opened, fragrant jar I keep in my desk. Tipped out a measure of green tea curls. Swirled them around, around, around, the bottom of the cup. They rang like bells. Bells accompanied me, walking to the sink, to the tap, to the water.
It’ll take some more time.
I’m watching the curls unfold, becoming leaves again, swelling, tinging the water green. Not pond green. Nice green.

I’ve only been able to peek inside Protag, so far, these days most recently. Not proper visits. New stuff, everywhere, naturally. A young UK writer is asking around for a read-thru of hers. I’m forever amazed by all the young’uns on Protag. I had the imagination, when I was their age. And grammar basics, sure: rules, that I’ve kinda experimented around a bit too much, perhaps. But can’t say fer sure I was ever as natural a storyteller as so many of these. Lessons and fun, there. And the why I like Protag so very, very much.

Yeah…Bolshe’ added days ago, now…
And Febin’s got tons posted I’ve only glanced at.
And...and Elorithryn...sounds like a party's rocking the Pub...

Conversation with Miss Half-Empty

The weekend was a wash-out. You’ve failed.

So might say the little voice that nags in my head. The catastrophizer. I believe it prob’ly more helpful if I choose to see – not to pretend the weekend wasn’t a wash-out – but, instead, see that the glass, as it were, is half full. So I did not do all I planned, or hoped to do, this past weekend. Nor Monday – nor so far today, for that matter – those days, and today, so far, essentially used up by the job. Instead, I’m gonna celebrate what I did do. Am doing. It’s not like I’m hiding from my failings. Mister...no, Miss, 'coz I'll tolerate more barbs from a Miss – Miss Half-Empty is sure not to let me forget. She has her uses, to a point. So, let’s begin, shall…we?

Begin, Aye. You didn’t add to GodSeed Vector, and you were sure you would.

Work was busy. Is busy. I am thinking of possible ways to go. I call it, pre-writing. I feel whatever I add should be lighter, somehow. More...Saturday serial, like Buck Rogers. Keeping it light. Staying away from the angst’y character introspection: that only slows down the action. That’s slowed things in other projects, I have noticed.

Such as your clumsier adds to Mage Hunting, yesss. And You didn’t start on your next Mage Hunting add.

I did one...Friday. Tried it, minus the character introspection. Bolshe added, that morn. Am into more pre-writing. Also, praised Bolsheviki on her add. Gimme a break.

Actually, You did nothing over at Protag.

I praised Bolsheviki. Read some poetry. Read some new members. Peered about in the Groups: Flash Fiction, Editing, the Pub, World-Building. I’m calling that pre-writing, too.

There’s Pre-Writing. Then there’s making life’s work from it, from research, and notes, and endlessly thinking about…stuff, instead of getting on with it. The sixty-thousand worder you’ve been fiddling with since High School comes to mind.

Prob’ly right there, I’ll give you…er, me, that. Still, I’ve my notes. Years of ‘em. And 400 pages enthusiastically scribbled in a binder: a stalled early draft I'm long past, but the world there, and all one side of the story. True enough, endlessly adding nifty ideas and thinking about it all doesn’t finish any story. But, y’know, I’m not apologizing for wanting to do it right. I have a vision for it. I want it that way. I’ll do it that way. You’re right, sure, and I’ll make the effort to actually do the thing, as soon as I can wrestle the time for it.
Thanks, was helpful, that. Really.

Scribblus Interruptussss

My brother is so wise. Over the phone, he talked me down off the ledge this morning.
[insert curse word here...make an adjective of it, describing...] the microwave, suddenly and frustratingly busted...

Ahh...and now someone's at the door — just as I'm tryyying to empty my head of the rant crashing about in there, behind my eyes. Have to slip over to the spy-hole a moment. I'll be Bach.

No one's there. Though. I can hear the buzz-boxes buzzing, in other apartments in the building. Someone's out front, obviously, pushing buttons. I don't like being pushed. And I'm not feeling at all neighbourly. Besides, knowing the pack who dwell in this stack of boxes, I'm prob'ly not far off in assuming it'll just be "Heh, I fuggot my keys."

The world could end so simply for such as these, couldn't it?

Radio buzzing: Residents are reminded to remain indoors during the solar maximum. Specifically, between the hours of very early and the very hot part of the afternoon. Death is fer'sure, and can be got from repeated exposures, such as incidental glare through glass foyers of apartment blocks.

That felt good. Place is quiet again. Either the someone stirred another someone into an act, especially like that word today, of neighbourliness; or went away, prob'ly to stew in that coffee shop around the corner, about how unneighbourly Vancouver's become toward the forgetful and keyless.

That felt good, too.

Back to wise and consoling brother...

"It's a seven year old microwave. Doors break. Y'can get a new one for fifty bucks." said he.

There might have been monks chanting, somewhere. Maybe a temple, too, smoky in incense.

I don't like broken things, any more than being pushed. My repeated fiddlings near spent me. At that moment came the epiphany. He was right, my brother! Once this writing exercise is done, I shall dress again for the blazing summery outdoors. I shall seek this new and reasonably-priced microwave, of which he spoke. Also, I shall take a hammer to the offending former unit, and convince it to unlatch — to release to me my favourite cup — if I'm not later again in a mood to try fix it.

QuickJot - Sat, July 18 '09

Groceries done. Not a chance for thinking about what to blog about...about. Funny. Managed a blog post every day this past workweek. Actual little essay'like things. Started them in the mornings. Jotted down jottings, while at work, every chance I got during work, in between...moments in between...um, doing the job. I'm rambling. I've got writing to do, even Saturday, when I'd rather go play, or something. I'm still rambling.

My add to Bolsheviki's Mage Hunting: I have notes, puzzle pieces, and I want to do that, this afternoon. If I put it together right, then post it tonight, and she'll have it for reading Sunday, UK morning.

Wanna check out Protag, naturally. For anything. For everything. Protag's still this huge part of my every day. Never want it to stop. Feels like it's a party that never ends. Even the workshops, that feel like schooldays.

Have got more of these weekend chores to do...mumble. Need a haircut. 30 degrees C on Friday in Vancouver, and I need to shed some insulation, or the core could melt in its brain-pan — I might lose data.

Wanna pre-write re GodSeed Vector, again. Am in a sci-fi frame of mind. Prob'ly all these specials about Apollo 11. Wonder what's on Space, tonight? Space: next week's gonna be wonderful! Torchwood...Children of earth. Episodes every weeknight, 7 pm.
And Doctor Who...Planet of The Dead, next Saturday night.
Must tell Bolsheviki.

GodSeed needs some googling about for paintings re the Annunciation. Angels possessing mortals. Found some German philosopher...stuff. Notes are where? And those nasty Zirks. What are they? What do they need? How do they feed? Get all that and I get how to stop 'em dead! Febin's written lots I needta catch up on. TAS...not so much, recently. Where are ya, TAS?

'Mage Hunting' Delay: Understanding Why

It seemed odd that it should take longer and longer for me to add a chapter to Bolsheviki’s Mage Hunting over on Protagonize, when my turn, as it were. I think I see now why. It’s become a big story – 79 chapters big, so far – and my own pre-writing routine has simply slowed me down.

When it’s my turn to add a chapter, usually I’ll read over previous chapters, so I can keep straight plot points, character details, time of day, or night, POV, chapter tone, whatever…

In early days of writing Mage Hunting, we could write new chapters overnight, often quicker. The story was just being formed. Characters coming into being. It was plain easy to add to, because we could go anywhere, within the small map of story already written. Even beginning to see beyond the known edges of the world.

Mage Hunting has just become bigger, is all. There’s simply more that I have to re-read in my pre-writing. And I don’t feel I should fiddle with the pre-writing routine, not too much. Unless I can come up with some shortcut. Keeping the story true to itself matters most.

I have, tho, said my sorry re my delay to Bolsheviki.

100th Blog Post!...Gotta Make It Something More than a WooHoo

Glimpsed this commercial on teevee. Paper towels…really green paper towels. We’ve all seen that breed of advert.

Greenest car, ever! Look! Stick your nose in its tail-pipe. Don’t the exhaust smell like roses? Mother Nature’s in love with this car!

…With this Product!

…These paper towels! Snowcapped mountain and clear lake background. See? THE best thing EVER to happen to the good Earth, these paper towels! Y’gotta get these paper towels and save the Earth!

But it’s a disposable paper towel. Folks strip off a square of it, dry their hands, dispose of it, right? If – and it bears repeating, IF – used for more than drying hands, for dabbing the gravy’d mouth during picnic, or for swabbing up some countertop catastrophe, after that it’ll become a crumpled thing, briefly airborne, tossed in the bin.

Naturally, that brings me to the glowing subject of the Cloth Wipe.

Yeah, it’ll have its chain of impacts, production-wise, and environmental, the cloth wipe. All the steps, so that I can hold on high this cloth wipe. Besides the ethical considerations re use of labour. The chain, of growing the cotton, processing it, the making, packaging, shipping, even illuminating the supermarket aisle so I can read the tiny price tag somebody also had to make. But that’s a burrowing headache I don’t need just now. Every manufactured thing has its chain, the costs beyond the 3-for-$1.99.

Here, only comparing green paper wipe against cloth.

Well, simply, I’m biased. Only have ever used cloth. I’ll use cloth towels in the kitchen, washing them daily, until they’re unfit for the kitchen. They then go to bathroom use: countertop, walls, floor, tub and sink. Bathroom cloths still washed daily: to keep them useable as long as possible. When past presentable, the bathroom cloths go toward cleaning the bike, or the twilight life as a rag in my truck.

All this green talk reminds me I should probably call in the hazmat folks. Disposal time for prematurely dead CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Two of ‘em. Seems they’re not the bees’ knees, these. I have one that for two years continues to inadequately illuminate the space what passes for living room. But 2 dead ones…

And it really wasn’t funny, however many Earth Days ago it was, when all those genius politicians mounted the swinging big bell together, ringing out the death knell for the incandescent lightbulb – even pushing for its ban – while extolling…these mercury’d things.
MERCURY, you…!

Picture your local landfill. Your one of how many around the good Earth? Seagulls crying, wheeling in the sky. Crumpled paper toweling flitting about the place. Under it all, out of sight, and so our great grandkids’ worry, a lake of mercury gradually swelling, drop by drop, from these dead CFLs.

Not a nice note to end on, that. Needs a little Earth-hug closing. My spent cloth wipes! Their very last use. I’ll have to climb a mountain for this, maybe Everest, Chomolungma. Find a high Himalayan stone stupa. Add to the strings of prayer flags streaming our hopes…

Human On-Leash Zone…working-rant title

I’m just gonna make the point unmistakably clear.
Wouldn’t wanna somehow offend local, politically-empowered doggie-lovers out there. Y’know the kind: the kind kind who’d motor themselves and four-legged family-member in family luxury-Beemer thru wintry and unplowed Vancouver streets (if it were refreshing winter) that couple of miles to…um, Le Pet Boutique, say, because four-legged family-member will only eat his fave soft bacon’y blend. And the human averting his gaze from fellow human begging on the corner…or warming self over steaming grating.

An aside, that, tho not much of the exaggeration…that.

Clear point I’d strayed from, before mini rant: I like doggies just fine. I’ve been a doggie’s human. A doggie occasionally comes to work: he lets me take his tennis ball, and I let him close his mouth on my hand; our agreement. Out in the real world, I’ll actually greet doggo before accompanying upright ape. The disdain I feel – thankfully not actually feeling, because I was wearing shoes – I’m aiming, as if about to pitch a bagful of disdain’ings…at aforementioned accompanying ape.

Doggo was only doing his doggo thing, I’m realistic about that. Exploring the world his ape let him off leash into. Doggo only doing what comes, and goes, naturally. On sidewalk. Around the corner and out of mind. In our fair city’s many green spaces, as the buzzword-knowing call them, but which I call public toilets.

Yeaahhh, there oughtta be a leash law…

Lessons [dot dot dot] of Life.

Gaawwd, sounds so melodramatic. Lessons…of…Life. Should don a frilly shirt, mope about some castle, really.

Jotting it down, before I forget, tho. I won’t have much opportunity today, not here at the job, I’m figuring. Rather, I won’t be allowing myself the opportunity here, at the job. A precaution, this. A toning down. Recently I’ve been posting, with abandon, as the poetic may say, to blog and Protag, but from the job. That’s an employee regulations no’no. Last night, still at the job, during a break from the job, a half-hour or so after blog’fully expressing my desire to simplifyyy, I noted PCAnywhere suddenly active, and my pc desktop no longer my private own. Scary as encountering a ghost in my wanderings, that. And a reminder. A lesson, too.

No one’s called me in and shut the door for a talking to, not yet. It might not come. It might. If it comes, I’ll come clean, naturally. Wasn’t surfing porn, after all. Only a quick blog and short minutes perusing Protag. And about to update some inventory report, when Little Bro popped in.

But that’s just one lesson I’m wanting to jot. Wanting to jot these, as said so I’ll remember, maybe learn from, if there’s learning to be got from any of them.

There’s also the writing environment at home I’m having a tough time calling…a lesson. Picture the typical writer’s den…from typical writer biography, as illustrated on teevee. Camera following writer thru a typical day. He’s looking everywhere, but at the camera. Folks encountered in his day invariably are smiling, supportive, and also don’t seem to see that camera…and crew. They must be invisible. That’s just me envying the writer blessed with a quiet place in which he can practice book-jacket poses. Yeah, well, that’s someone else’s place. That’s not the box in the noisy stack of boxes I live in.

How do students study in those dorms, anyway? I didn’t have, or feel, so much distraction in my younger days. This then just my old brain wearing out, is it? Adaptation a possible evolutionary outcome of all this…?
Is that the lesson, then?

Note To Self...Simplify!

I’ve been playing with spreadsheets in plotting out bigger stories. Which works well in laying out cross-plots, who does what and when. Spotting more than once a nice moment when a pair of characters might overlap their bits of story, meet, and so on. Don’t have Microsoft Office on my home machine. There, I’m using Microsoft Works, that spreadsheet, which essentially is the same.

Anyway. Since it works well in the bigger stuff, thought I’d try it for plotting out my current add for Bolsheviki’s Mage Hunting, over on Protag.

[Meaningful pause]

Well…it worked, but not nearly as well. Perhaps because I was plotting it up on the laptop, and not under ideal jotting-down conditions. Tapping in the plot points, row after row down the sheet, was fun, sure. And each character’s action and reaction across the columns. But. Have you ever tried copy-pasting from a spreadsheet to any kind of working draft…using the f’…fiddly, laptop, pointing device? Tried it only the once.

If I felt like playing a game, then I’d fiddle with that pointing device, however I felt like writing. Laptop has a usb mouse, of course. But the awkward positionings of laptop, and lap, and tapper, as in me tapping, and mouse on paper notes as mouse pad – and inadequate slapdash mouse pad, at that! – frustrated even more so. I want to write, I want to jot it down fast, I don’t need to fight the tools I’m using.

I over-complicated the exercise.
There’s a lot to be said for pen and the back of some recycled fax scrap.
It’s how I used to do all of it, last century.

0 Yard Siding

Spotted that as I drove home, after groceries, after Air Care testing my motoring vehicle, and passing said test, with conditional okay re new gas cap; and after renewing motoring-vehicle insurance for another year. Spotted the small hand-painted plaque hung over the door of the portable that passes for the railman's office down here in the Marpole shunting yard. So this is 0 Yard, then.

Also, spotted a likely spot where I could snap a closer pic of that snoozing caboose.

The CPR never would've needed a caboose for shunting about railcars. Marpole, and 0 Yard, simply where it has come to rest, my guess, after decades of rolling and rattling at the back end of trains that got to see all of Canada.

Blogger Profile Interests Broken…but Being Worked On

Clicking on those diverse and nifty interests in our Blogger Profiles has suddenly returned NO PROFILE FOUND. Not for any of them.

For me, it was like suddenly being cut off from all the rest of the world and all the other bloggers riding along on it.
Yup, something broke, a very quick google about returned this morning.
However, no worries. They – the They behind the curtain who keep things working – they’re looking into it.
Interestingly, they call this Interests Search thingie the Blogger Profile Browsing Feature. Which is what it is, eh.

Here’s their reassuring link: http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2009/07/1971735.html

Shadows on Water...actually, it's a Test

A Test. I'm testing the Schedule a Future Posting thingie.

Set the date...in the near future...and I'll see, at the appointed hour, won't I?

-------

Thursday, July 9 '09,

6:47'ish, pm:

It worked.

Compose something. Even put in a pic. Under Post Options, set Post Date and Time in the future. Click Publish Post. And it is scheduled for publishing at that precise, future When.

Simple.

QuickJot — Wed., july 8 '09

I've fallen back into an old habit. Not posting until I'm more in the mood, as in feel I can do the thing right, to my satisfaction. It's no writerly calamity. Not even a creative block. Work's been busier, recently. Work, as in day job, and night job, in the busy season, and which ain't writing. There've been other demands demanding the hours I'm awake in every day. I'm tired. And wanting to play. And simply not wanting to have to work at any writing when I'm tired and useless. I like the doing the writing to be fun.

Was just about to stop there.
But the point here is to do the thing. Even when it feels wrong. Because not doing this, saying whatever my excuse for not doing it, falling back into that old bad habit means I don't get my scribbling exercise. And exercise should properly be a daily...exercise, if I'm gonna get the eventual good of it.

Gawd, that hurt. Felt the burrrn. So it's gotta be doing good...

QuickJot...Thurs, July 2 '09...Teatime for My Soul

Lonnnnggg work day.
Taking a break.
Just made a tea. Zapped a mugful of water and teabag three minutes in the microwave. Gave my soul the moment of quiet that was handy.

Pre- the zapping, I lay the teabag on the surface of that water. Did not…repeat…did not break the moment with spoon drowning that teabag. Stood, instead. Watched, instead. Water darkly seeping, sweeping up through the teabag, like the dark sea taking a ship, flooding her to the last bulkhead, and sinking her by the head.

Two sugars. There wasn’t any milk. I wanna go write something.

Canada day, July 1 '09

Formerly known as Dominion Day, Canada Day, this year, today, Wednesday, mid-busy-workweek, feels little more than a day of rest. Thursday's month-ending at work. Trying not to think on that. I've hung the red Maple Leaf boat-pennant in the window with care. Hoping ours, and others, keep safe in those wars I'm saying nothing more on today. Staying away from ranting, I've decided. As long as possible today, into tonight, keeping myself blissfully ignorant of...oh, that's almost a rant. Just adding I'll keep the news off.

In a brilliant distancing move, I've already gone walkies.

Down to the river. And snapping pix. Sixty-four snapshots in one half-hour. Way too much sunlight blowing out details. That's because I slept in. But I needed the sleep. And I needed to fill my head with the walk through tree-filled Marpole to the river. Stood there, like a tree, filling up on sunlight and sea breeze, and whispering river.

There's writing I wanna do. Some I have to do. Those exercises, too, in Protag's Groups. By another name, they're writin' workshops. And reminding how much fun writin' and workshoppin' it was a thousand years ago in school. Anyone can join any group. They're such a new addition to the fun'ness of Protag that there are certain to come more groups. Genre-writing, prob'ly. So far, we have groups re Poetry, Editing, World-Building...

...That reminds me...I should point Bolsheviki at this fun'ness.